Wholesale cost of channels

[rharkins]

Sorry if someone else posted this, but I didn't see it. Here's a table from SNL Kagan showing the wholesale price per subscriber for content. I'm sure this needs to be taken with a grain of salt since negotiation between provider and distributor needs to be taken into account

Here's the link to the original article:
What Cable Subscribers Pay for Channels They Don't Watch | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD

Let the ala carte discussion continue! I just hate it that 40% of the charges relate to sports programming, and I just don't watch sports. If I added up the channels I do watch regularly, the wholesale cost would be $5 or so.

Rick

 

[goaliebob99]

Has anyone totaled this up to see what the total cost for everything would be?

 

[jmccurrytech]

ESPN needs to be it's own ala carte package!

 

[cditty]

Pretty amazing to see the value ESPN has... I wish dish would add MTV Jamz. They actually show videos. At .02 it's a steal

 

[whatchel1]

start adding

Has anyone totaled this up to see what the total cost for everything would be?

Why don't you do it?

 

[CowboyDren]

Oh. My. Gosh. I hate channel bundling even MORE now. I spend a LOT of money for stuff I don't watch, and it's only reinforced here. Call me un-American or immasculine, but these sports channels are killing me, and I NEVER watch them. Ever.

 

[catnap1972]

Call me un-American or immasculine, but these sports channels are killing me, and I NEVER watch them. Ever.

Not just you. 4 bucks is robbery for something that's going to sit in my blocked list (and will NEVER find it's way out). Wish I could tell the mouse where to shove it.

 

[Hall]

Pretty amazing to see the value ESPN has...

"Value" ? Says who ? I'll admit, I will watch ESPN and don't hate the channel, but over $4 for that channel when most channels are $0.20 and under ?

 

[cditty]

"Value" ? Says who ? I'll admit, I will watch ESPN and don't hate the channel, but over $4 for that channel when most channels are $0.20 and under ?

Maybe 'perceived' value would have been better wording.

 

[TheKrell]

Call me un-American or immasculine, but these sports channels are killing me, and I NEVER watch them. Ever.

Same here.

 

[catnap1972]

Maybe 'perceived' value would have been better wording.

In my case, that would be 'zero'

 

[satjay]

Has anyone put together what there package would cost if they turned back time and were able to package there own channels like Cband was. Intresting that the MLB network price was nothing to crazy

 

[DodgerKing]

Has anyone totaled this up to see what the total cost for everything would be?

It is not as difficult as you may think. Instead of adding each price separately, just take the average they listed at the end and multiply that by the total number of channels.

172 total channels and an average of .20 per channel makes a total of $34.40

 

[DodgerKing]

Intresting that the MLB network price was nothing to crazy

That one channel isn't much, but remember it is connected to the carriage agreement for EI.

 

[mike123abc]

You only get EI if you paid a lot of money up front. Dish decided against it, DIRECTV and some cable companies decided to do it.

 

[DodgerKing]

From the article

You'll find this particularly upsetting if you don't watch sports. Because sports channels account for about 40 percent of cable fees.

A good point if sports was not that big of a deal for subs and not a big money maker for cable and DBS providers. I would be willing to bet that more than 40% of subs sign up for satellite or cable because of sports as their #1 reason and way more that 40% of subs watch sports on these channels at least part of the time.

 

[DodgerKing]

You only get EI if you paid a lot of money up front. Dish decided against it, DIRECTV and some cable companies decided to do it.

Exactly, which helps demonstrate my point.

The point being that MLB can charge less for MLBNet because of the fact that the companies that carry this channel also carry EI, something they pay a lot more for. So baseball ends up making money off of the other part of the carriage agreement linking the two.

Also the fact that MLBNet is less than a year old so nobody is going to pay a lot for something new and unknown.

If MLBNet ends up being successful and popular and/or it is no longer tied to EI, then you may see the price for it going up.

 

[ryotgz]

Glad to see some of the more expensive packages you get for only one channel costs a few cents. But you have to have $5-$10 more for other crap channels.

 

[Rob052067]

The generic wholesale prices in this listing are, I assume, based on carriage by the provider on the most common tier where the cost of the channel is spread over all subscribers. In an ala carte world, each channel's cost would be spread among only the number of customers who choose to subscribe to each channel.

To make this easy to understand, say a channel costs $0.10 per customer when that cost is spread among all 100,000 customers of CableSatCoXYZ. But, if say only 10,000 customers choose to subscribe to that same channel in an ala carte world, it would be very likely that the cost for that channel would have to be $1.00 per customer.

In other words, if the average cost per channel is $0.10, and there are 100 channels in the most popular package, the cost of programming is $10.00 total for all 100 channels. But, if customers choose to receive only their 10 favorite channels, and the cost per channel rises to an average of $1.00 each, the total cost for only 10 channels would still be $10.00.

This is a very simplistic example, but it is simple economics. The cost per channel is kept lower in the current business model, and there would not likely be any savings to the consumer in an ala carte world.

 

[merk]

according to that pricing, all the channels i watch would be under $5. I'm also one of the ones who never watches any of the sports channels.

personally, i'd rather have ala carte. let me pick what i want.